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Old 11-24-2013, 12:59 AM
 
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
5,281 posts, read 6,556,141 times
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A few years ago, I was reading some article to better understand the caste system in India. But in one of the articles, someone suspected that the Indian caste system was basically a system of racism. He made a statement "Indians have no issue admitting to the caste system, but they would never admit to any sort of racism". I'm not sure if India is racist or not, but that made me think of something. America and it's own issue with "isms".

America was a society created to combat many practices found in Europe at that time. One of the biggest was the idea of classism, which was a huge deal in England for many centuries. It seemed like America tried to largely mitigate the class issues with a pro-market society, and creating a constitutional republic that gave everyone equal rights. I think our founding fathers knew you couldn't avoid classes, but you could at the very least give people enough rights so they can move in between classes.

It seems like America had a new type if ism called racism. And it seemed because America had the idea of slaves and different races, that economic disparities could easily be explained by race over class. As a result, America has spent much of it's time as a nation fighting race issues. But one have to ask, are race issues just another disguise for class issues?

I think one has to really question America's fixation with racism when you see people of different indentification groups who all have different economic situations. There are many wealth hispanics, asians, blacks, etc as there are many poor ones as well. With this in mind, one have to wonder if it's more of a class issue than a race issue. I believe for many years America has become race obsessed, but with a lot of forced integration, many of the adults (and leaders) of American society have grown up in multi racial environments. As they grow up, they're far less race concious, and it seems that in modern day America's class problems are being exposed.

There are many examples of class issues such...

-Public schools districts in poor areas are generally under funded. Many of the those who endorse the public school system have experiences being in a well funded upper middle class school district. However it seems that the very funding distribution tends to be fairly classist.

-Colleges are becoming ever more expensive. And it seems now only those who are wealthy can really continue a post-graduate education. But on top of this, while it's easier for people to obtain bachelor degrees, they also carry less value. It seems only the wealthy can go to school many years after their undergraduates.

-Cities seem to become ever more expensive, at the same time becoming a large concentration for business centers. Yet affordable areas are moving further away from cities, making it harder for people of lower income to transport to these cities where many of the higher paying jobs are.


It seems like many of these don't target race, but target economic and social classes. Seemingly keeping people at their class levels, and making economic mobility much more difficult. It also appears to be becoming increasingly harder to start businesses, or to loans for businesses. Also housing prices are increasing in many American cities, and are completely unaffordable to the average person in places like California.

So why has to wonder if America is becoming moreso classist than racist. Many incidents with race in America are fairly isolated, and are fairly tame examples compared to the past. Yet we continue to see issues where class is playing an important role in America.

 
Old 11-24-2013, 07:37 AM
 
Location: Utica, NY
1,911 posts, read 3,013,739 times
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Definitely more classist. The poor are really looked down on here even more so than the UK which has simila poor social mobility. I would say some of it is tinged with racism though, especially the stereotypes pertaining to people on welfare which are usually directed at black people.
 
Old 11-24-2013, 07:42 AM
 
Location: The Triad
34,091 posts, read 82,490,189 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by branh0913 View Post
Is America racist or classist?
Yes it is.

Quote:
...are race issues just another disguise for class issues?
Of course.

Quote:
...has to wonder if America is becoming more so classist than racist.
Blame that on TV (the visuals) and later on hip hop music crossover popularity.
 
Old 11-24-2013, 01:13 PM
 
Location: Waiting for a streetcar
1,137 posts, read 1,383,525 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by branh0913 View Post
America was a society created to combat many practices found in Europe at that time. One of the biggest was the idea of classism, which was a huge deal in England for many centuries.
The founders had no arguments at all with class itself, but rather with the way it was being preserved and maintained in England. Keep in mind that "We, the People" in their minds was actually just white male landowners of a certain age and ancestry. In other words, the Bilderbergers of their day.

Quote:
Originally Posted by branh0913 View Post
It seemed like America tried to largely mitigate the class issues with a pro-market society, and creating a constitutional republic that gave everyone equal rights.
Huh? Native Americans, blacks, women, immigrants, gays. Equal rights have been words on a piece of paper.

Quote:
Originally Posted by branh0913 View Post
I think our founding fathers knew you couldn't avoid classes, but you could at the very least give people enough rights so they can move in between classes.
And along with the UK, we have the worst intergenerational econmomic mobility in the developed world. Everyone does this better than we do. Children born into the bottom tiers are very unlikely to move up. Children born into the top tiers are very unlikely to move down. That's America for you.
 
Old 11-24-2013, 01:36 PM
 
641 posts, read 1,015,604 times
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This what I hate about this country. People that for the most part busted their ***** are "elitist" because they worked hard for their money. Capitalism is a competition, if you lost and you do not like that, there are plenty of other options available around the world.
 
Old 11-24-2013, 01:39 PM
 
Location: North of Canada, but not the Arctic
20,896 posts, read 19,366,943 times
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Good point, OP. As the races become more integrated, we still see the stratification based on wealth. However, the disparity between the rich and poor has always been there. It's just that they didn't always seem so isolated from each other.

I attribute the change to the tremendous growth of population. In the old part of the city where I live (Detroit), there are several wealthy (or more precisely once-wealthy) neighborhoods interspersed among the not so wealthy neighborhoods, separated by mere blocks. You would think as the population expanded, the pattern would be repeated, but in fact the wealthy seem to congregate only in two areas and at the outer fringes. In other words, very little intermixing among the ultra-rich and ultra-poor.

True, the middle-income portion of the population is quite vast and covers a wide area and a wide range of incomes. But that makes the isolation between the very wealthy and very poor quite vast as well.
 
Old 11-24-2013, 01:43 PM
 
Location: North of Canada, but not the Arctic
20,896 posts, read 19,366,943 times
Reputation: 25387
Quote:
Originally Posted by Red3311 View Post
This what I hate about this country. People that for the most part busted their ***** are "elitist" because they worked hard for their money. Capitalism is a competition, if you lost and you do not like that, there are plenty of other options available around the world.
I didn't get the impression from the OP that he/she was trying to apportion blame. More like just making an observation of demographic patterns.

It's true that we have had several threads on "bashing the successful", but I don't see this as one.
 
Old 11-24-2013, 02:01 PM
 
28,573 posts, read 18,579,280 times
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Traditionally in Europe, "class" was as strictly defined as "caste" in India. Like Indian castes, the relationship of class and wealth in Europe was more than coincidental, but it was not universal. Someone of high class could be penniless, and gaining wealth did not change the "class" of a commoner.

Even nationality was a weaker distinction than that between commoners and nobility: The nobility of England, France, Germany, et cetera, considered themselves of equal class across nationalities compared to the commoners in any of their respective nations; it was more respectable for an English noble to marry a German noble than for an English noble to marry an English commoner.

North America was predominantly settled by non-nobility and the governments of the newly independent colonies were set up to prevent that hard class system from being re-established.

All references to "equality" at that time were specifically references to the European hard division between commoners and nobility. To this day, elements of that division certainly exist in the UK--it's still an eyebrow-raiser when British nobility marries out of class.

Very quickly, though, Americans latched upon race as the replacement for class, especially the establishment of a "slave class" in deliberate emulation of ancient Greek society in the South--southern newspaper editorials and such speak of this deliberate emulation, and we see it in the commonality of Greek-inspired home architecture among the wealthy (where in the North we see Victorian-inspired architecture).

Regarding economics, we really have to be careful not to think of the Baby Boom Bubble as being representative of the history of the US overall.

World War II created a social-economic situation in the US that was unique in the history of mankind. The war left all the economic competitors of the US in shambles, yet left the US untouched, with a greatly expanded industrial base, and suddenly with world-wide political reach and access to previously closed natural resources. All the world was a desperate market, and the US had a practical monopoly on supply.

The millions of WWII veterans had the GI bill, VA housing benefits--better options for education and relocation than any previous entire generation had ever enjoyed anywhere.

The Baby Boom was born into an industrial paradise that had not existed before, so we have to be very careful attempting to draw any conclusions about social mobility from that generation. That bubble burst in the early 70s when the rest of the world finally recovered from WWII.
 
Old 11-24-2013, 02:32 PM
 
Location: interior Alaska
6,895 posts, read 5,799,109 times
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Why Not Both? - YouTube
 
Old 11-24-2013, 02:56 PM
 
1,915 posts, read 3,974,370 times
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The USA is a classist system masked by racism. Get broke, unemployed White folks confused and angry about other races, and classism slips right by them. If you're lucky, a few of them will think they are Republicans!
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